page_title: Ode: Intimations of Immortality
section_title: Poem
hierarchical_section_title: Ode: Intimations of Immortality / Poem
caption_attribution_description: English: Copy of Ode: Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth and transcribed by Mary Wordsworth in a volume for Coleridge, 1804. Later published in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807).
context_page_description: "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" is a poem by William Wordsworth, completed in 1804 and published in Poems, in Two Volumes. The poem was completed in two parts, with the first four stanzas written among a series of poems composed in 1802 about childhood. The first part of the poem was completed on 27 March 1802 and a copy was provided to Wordsworth's friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who responded with his own poem, "Dejection: An Ode", in April. The fourth stanza of the ode ends with a question, and Wordsworth was finally able to answer it with seven additional stanzas completed in early 1804. It was first printed as "Ode" in 1807, and it was not until 1815 that it was edited and reworked to the version that is currently known, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality".
  The poem is an irregular Pindaric ode in 11 stanzas that combines aspects of Coleridge's Conversation poems, the religious sentiments of the Bible and the works of Saint Augustine, and aspects of the elegiac and apocalyptic traditions.
context_section_description: The ode contains 11 stanzas split into three movements. The first movement is four stanzas long and discusses the narrator's inability to see the divine glory of nature, the problem of the poem. The second movement is four stanzas long and has a negative response to the problem. The third movement is three stanzas long and contains a positive response to the problem. The ode begins by contrasting the narrator's view of the world as a child and as a man, with what was once a life interconnected to the divine fading away:
  There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
  
  The earth, and every common sight,
  
  To me did seem
  
  Apparelled in celestial light,
  
  The glory and the freshness of a dream.
  
  It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
  
  Turn wheresoe'er I may,
  
  By night or day,
  
  The things which I have seen I now can see no more. (lines 1–9)
  In the second and third stanzas, the narrator continues by describing his surroundings and various aspects of nature that he is no longer able to feel. He feels as if he is separated from the rest of nature until he experiences a moment that brings about feelings of joy that are able to overcome his despair:
  To me alone there came a thought of grief:
  
  A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
  
  And I again am strong:
  
  The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
  
  No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; (lines 22–26)
  The joy in stanza III slowly fades again in stanza IV as the narrator feels like there is "something that is gone". As the stanza ends, the narrator asks two different questions to end the first movement of the poem. Though they appear to be similar, one asks where the visions are now ("Where is it now") while the other doesn't ("Whither is fled"), and they leave open the possibility that the visions could return:
  A single Field which I have looked upon,
  
  Both of them speak of something that is gone:
  
  The Pansy at my feet
  
  Doth the same tale repeat:
  
  Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
  
  Where is it now, the glory and the dream? (lines 52–57)
  The second movement begins in stanza V by answering the question of stanza IV by describing a Platonic system of pre-existence. The narrator explains how humans start in an ideal world that slowly fades into a shadowy life:
  Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
  
  The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
  
  Hath had elsewhere its setting,
  
  And cometh from afar:
  
  Not in entire forgetfulness,
  
  And not in utter nakedness,
  
  But trailing clouds of glory do we come
  
  From God, who is our home:
  
  Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
  
  Shades of the prison-house begin to close
  
  Upon the growing Boy,
  
  But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
  
  He sees it in his joy; (lines 58–70)
  Before the light fades away as the child matures, the narrator emphasises the greatness of the child experiencing the feelings. By the beginning of stanza VIII, the child is described as a great individual, and the stanza is written in the form of a prayer that praises the attributes of children:
  Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
  
  Thy Soul's immensity;
  
  Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
  
  Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
  
  That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
  
  Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, —
  
  Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
  
  On whom those truths do rest,
  
  Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
  
  In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; (lines 108–117)
  The end of stanza VIII brings about the end of a second movement within the poem. The glories of nature are only described as existing in the past, and the child's understanding of mortality is already causing them to lose what they once had:
  Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
  
  And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
  
  Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! (lines 129–131)
  The questions in Stanza IV are answered with words of despair in the second movement, but the third movement is filled with joy. Stanza IX contains a mixture of affirmation of life and faith as it seemingly avoids discussing what is lost. The stanza describes how a child is a
caption: 1804 holograph copy of Stanza I–III by Mary Wordsworth
exif: {"Image Make": "EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY", "Image Model": "KODAK EASYSHARE C613 ZOOM DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "480", "Image YResolution": "480", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "KODAK EASYSHARE C613 ZOOM DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "244", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "13682", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "1944", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/64", "EXIF FNumber": "27/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:03:08 05:45:43", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:03:08 05:45:43", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "599/100", "EXIF ApertureValue": "143/50", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "143/50", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "6", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2848", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2134", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "13530", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "80", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "36", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "-108"}